NEC has announced what may well be the first notebook to be based on Intel's upcoming 65nm, dual-core processor, 'Yonah'.

The Japanese manufacturer's LaVie RX LR900/ED, announced yesterday, will contain the new CPU, backed by 512MB of DDR 2 SDRAM - the upper limit's 1.5GB - and Intel's 945 Express chipset, aka 'Callistoga' and derived from the 945 desktop chipset series.

Shipping under the Centrino brand, the LR900/ED contains an 802.11a/b/g Wi-Fi adaptor: Intel's ProWireless 3945ABG. The machine will also provide Bluetooth 2.0 connectivity.

The notebook will ship with a 1400 x 1050, 14.1in display driven by the 945 Express' integrated GMA 950 graphics core. NEC is building in a 100GB hard disk and a DVD±RW/-RAM/+R dual-layer optical drive. There's a PC Card slot into which users can slip a bundled SD/xD/MemoryStick reader. There are four USB 2.0 ports and a four-pin FireWire connector. Gigabit Ethernet is built-in, too, along with the usual 56Kbps modem.

NEC said the 2kg machine will run for approximately 4.1 hours on a single battery charge.

What NEC didn't say was when the machine will ship - 'sometime in 2006' was as close as it got to a launch timeframe. Yonah is expected to debut early next year as part of the launch of the third-generation Centrino platform.

NEC didn't say what version of Yonah it will use. The chip is expected to debut at 1.66GHz, 1.83GHz and 2GHz as the T2300, T2400 and T2500, respectively. ®